ENAIRE takes part in two European projects to promote future urban mobility with flying vehicles

ENAIRE, Spain's national air navigation manager, is working on European projects to manage the future mobility of people in urban and suburban areas through flying vehicles, and air taxis in particular, as well as activities such as drone deliveries.

So said ENAIRE's CEO, Ángel Luis Arias, at the Virtual Congress organised by the Official Association of Aeronautical Engineers titled "The future is waiting for us:the new urban air mobility".

 "We must bring urban mobility into the third dimension, to airspace, and do so more efficiently and sustainably", said Angel Luis Arias, who stressed that the U-Space concept being developed in Europe will be essential to making this new air mobility possible.

"ENAIRE, as a public entity of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, is ready to exercise its responsibility to create a snowball effect that will make it possible for interested private companies or public agencies in Spain to be among the leaders in the development and operation of this new sector", said ENAIRE's CEO.

In this regard, ENAIRE is taking part in two projects - financed by Horizon 2020 European funds through the SESAR Joint Undertaking on U-Space and Urban Air Mobility - that have just been awarded. One of them, led by EUROCONTROL, is called CORUS-XUAM, and the other, AMU-LED, is being spearheaded by EVERIS.

Both projects are expected to have air taxi demonstrations in 2022 across Europe. ENAIRE will manage the first air taxi demonstrations in Spain, which will be held in 2022 in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela.

ENAIRE's involvement in U-Space

ENAIRE has been working hard on U-Space since it was conceived by the European Commission with the publication of the "U-Space Blueprint" in 2017, collaborating and participating in national and international projects.

Of note is the DOMUS project, selected by the SESAR Joint Undertaking to evaluate U-Space demonstrators in Europe, and led by ENAIRE, which coordinated 17 private companies and public entities in Spain, with a budget of 4 million euros.

The DOMUS project concluded with the conduct of a validation exercise of the U-Space concept, which proved successful both in executing the simultaneous operations managed digitally, and in demonstrating the operational concept and its architecture.

About ENAIRE

ENAIRE is the company of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda that manages air navigation in Spain. It renders aerodrome control services at 21 airports, including the busiest in terms of air traffic, plus en-route and approach control, from five control centres: Barcelona, Madrid, Gran Canaria, Palma and Seville. In addition, ENAIRE provides communications, navigation and surveillance services to 45 air control towers.

In 2019, ENAIRE handled 2.1 million flights to and from four continents (Europe, America, Asia and Africa), transporting 320 million passengers.

ENAIRE is the fourth most important European air navigation service provider, and, in a clear commitment to the Single Sky initiative, belongs to international partnerships such as SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) Joint Undertaking, SESAR Deployment Manager, A6 Alliance, iTEC, CANSO (Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation) and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization).